the power of the edict of Leo, continued to carve his mythic animals, his symbolic birds and fishes, and even tried his hand at the first rude revival of the human figure in sculpture. His figures were disproportionate and mediæval in form,—what could one expect from a man of the Middle Ages just reawakening to the conception of art?—but they were full of fire and life. Their mystic beasts were horrible as any nightmare could conceive them; they were indeed conceived in the darkness of that night of superstition, ignorance, and fierce strife. Their angels were grotesque, not from want of imagination, but from want of models of form and proportion; their men are full of all kinds of expression, with their heads too large and their limbs too short; but their attitudes are lively, their faces grotesquely keen.
As a proof of this distinctive style, compare the Byzantine altar of S. Ambrogio at Milan, here illustrated, with the Comacine pulpit of the same church. (See page 88.)
Byzantine Altar in the Church of S. Ambrogio, Milan.
So many students of architecture roughly class as Byzantine every kind of intricate decorative work of the centuries before the Renaissance; but I think that, excepting in some instances in Venice and Ravenna (and not all the work of the era there), most of the Italian ornamental sculpture is Comacine, and not Byzantine. Certainly if you see a sly-faced lamb, or a placid lion with rolling eyes, peering out from beneath the abacus of a column, or a perky bird lifting up its claw over a vase, with an extremely lively expression of eagerness, that work is not Byzantine, though it may be surrounded and mixed with the most intricate possible weaving of lines or foliage. However, I leave the question of derivation of style to wiser students than myself, and return to the Comacine Masters and their symbolism.
It seems impossible that the Comacine sculptures on S. Michele could have come through the Byzantine. It is true they show rude and unskilled technical execution, but they have intense spirit, belief, life, and spontaneity. The Magistri must have got their ornamentation as they did their architecture from an older source,—and a traditional one. It came down like their Freemasonry from ancient Eastern builders through pagan Rome, and ages of mystic religions such as Gnostic and other deistic forms, till it became incorporated in Christianity. "We might," says Sacchi,[61] "define Christian symbolism as the representation of mysteries and religious truths by means of forms, cyphers, and determinate images." (La rappresentazione di dogmi, misteri e verità religiose, per mezzo di forme, cifre ed immagini determinate.)
An older and more authoritative testimony is given by Dionysius the Areopagite, the associate of St. Paul, by whom he was consecrated. In his De angelica seu celesti Hierarchia, Epistola ad Timotheum Ephæsiæ civitatis episcopum, he writes—"It is necessary to teach the mind as to the spiritual hierarchies, by means of material figures and formal compositions, so that by comparing the most sacred forms in our minds, we may raise before us the spiritual and unpictured beings and similitudes on high." As he says elsewhere, "ascendere per formas veritatim."
Again he writes to Titus—"Only by means of occult and difficult enigmas, is it given to the fathers of science to show forth mystic and divine truths."[62] In the second epistle to Timotheus, St. Dionysius writes—"We must raise ourselves from ascetic facts by means of imaginative forms, and we should not marvel as do the unknowing, if for this end are chosen many-footed beings, or creatures with many heads; if we figure bovine images, or lions, or eagles with curved beaks; flying creatures with three-fold wings, celestial irradiations, wheel-like forms, vario-tinted horses, the armed Sagittarius, and every kind of sacred and formal symbol which has come down to us by tradition." St. Nilus, too, writes to Olimpiodorus—"You ask me if I think it an honourable thing that you erect temples to the memory of martyrs as well as to that of the Redeemer—those martyrs who are certainly among the saints, and whose pains and sufferings have borne witness to the gospel. You also ask whether it would be wise to decorate the walls on the right and left with animal figures, so that we may see hares (conies) and goats, and every kind of beast flying away, while men and dogs follow them up. Whether it would be well to represent fish and fishermen throwing the line or the net; whether on the calcareous stone shall be well-carved effigies of all kinds of animals, and ornamental friezes and representations of birds, beasts, and serpents of divers generations?" St. Nilus says later that he quite agrees with all these things; so if the Fathers of the Church respected them, we need not heed Mr. Ruskin's diatribes.
St. Nilus lived in the time of John XVI., 985-996, nearly 900 years after Dionysius, but this extract from his letter shows that Christian symbolism had not altered in all those centuries, and the church he describes is no more or less than a Comacine church of that era. The chase is figured forth on the façades of S. Michele and S. Stefano at Pavia, and S. Zeno at Verona. The huntsman and his dogs are generally used as emblems of the faithful Christian driving out heresies.[63] The fisherman symbolizes the priesthood, fishing for souls out of the ocean of sin. There is a beautiful example of this myth in the fresco of the ship (the ark of the Church) on the roof of the Spanish chapel at Santa Maria Novella in Florence, where the fisherman is casting his line from the bank.
Seen through the medium of these early lights, we no longer look on the façade of S. Michele as Ruskin does, as a sign of savage atrocity, but every line of the time-worn sculptured friezes stands out as full of meaning as an Egyptian hieroglyphic, to one who can interpret it. On the angle to the left we have the army of the Church militant, figured as armed soldiers, whose horses trample some quadrupeds underfoot: symbol—the vanquishing of sins. Above this a frieze of four animals—first, a lion; second, too much broken to be decipherable, but from the context it is probably a man-headed creature; third, a bull; fourth, a winged creature. Here we have the four beasts of the Apocalypse,—emblems of the Evangelists. "And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle" (Rev. iv. 7). The connection between the two friezes is evident. First, the Church militant clad in the whole armour of God, and the second emblematizing the shield of the Gospel.
In the next compartment of the façade, that on the left of the door, we have the chase of a deer and other animals flying from fierce dogs, which we have explained above; over this a frieze of vine-leaves. Here, again, the connection of thought is apparent. The vine figures Christ, the only true refuge from heresy.
High up on each side of this left door is a peacock with an olive-leaf in its claw-symbol of the Church bringing peace. In the centre between these is the bishop with his robes and pastoral staff—the visible dispenser of peace in the Church. On the fourth frieze, which is above the door, we go into the mythic animals: here is a hippogriff with the three-fold tail; a woman with six breasts, carrying two pine-cones; she is in a long robe with large sleeves, and veiled as an Egyptian; two sphinxes, on each of which a man rides, and whispers in their ears; a dragon with wings and bird's feet, on its neck a child; a priest with vase of holy water and an asperge, who is blessing some people; a man (Zohak) between two winged serpents which bite his head; a sphinx to whom a man presents a little branch of a tree; two hippogriffs, seated opposite each other with a man in the centre who places their claws on his head. A marvellous frieze indeed, and one which in spite of St. Dionysius speaks as much of Eastern traditions long before Christ, as of Christianity itself. The many-breasted woman with the pine-cones is the ancient mother goddess, Isis, Cybele, or Cupra, according to the age and clime; here I take it the old image is turned to new uses, and she figures Eve, the primitive mother. The two sphinxes are obscure, but they would seem to emblematize man wresting the secrets of knowledge of good and evil from the mystery of the unknown, as when Adam and Eve ate the apple; the dragon, always emblem of sin or the devil, ridden by a child, is a fine symbol of the child Christ, the seed of Eve, who should overcome sin. Then comes the purification by benediction, as shadowing Abel's accepted sacrifice, and the serpent-fanged remorse of Cain, as shown in Zohak.
"There where the narrowing chasm
Rose loftier in the hill
Stood Zohak,